Writing

Review: Crossing Mandelbaum Gate by Kai Bird

On April 14, 1948, one of Jerusalem’s finest old houses became the site of an assault by Jordanian Legionnaires. After a fight in which 35 Jews died, all that remained of the house was a stone gate and three walls with arched windows. For the next nineteen years, until Israelis obliterated the site in 1967, Mandelbaum Gate served as the grim symbol of a divided city and, by extension, the desperate conflict in the Middle East.

In the mid-1950s, Kai Bird passed through the Gate daily on his way to school. The son of a US Foreign Service officer posted to Jerusalem, Bird understand even as a child the intractability of the struggle between two peoples who had once lived together with a degree of civilly. From 1956 until 1978, Bird went on to live in several Middle Eastern countries, each of which added a layer of complexity and sympathy to his perspectives. He later married the only daughter of Holocaust survivors, which stirred other loyalties. Most of his life was spent trying to reconcile ideas of identity, belonging, and nationhood.

What makes Crossing Mandelbaum Gate a compelling and readable book is that Bird draws on what he observed as a child to add heart to complex political events. And, using his skills as a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian, he offers an informed retrospective glance at incidents he experienced firsthand. This work is truly important. In fact, it’s required reading for anyone wanting to understand how we got where we now are: how the rise and fall of secular Arab nationalism opened the door to the Islamist movement and how a misguided policy that led to short-term gains resulted in long-term tragedy for so many.

Published by Adair V

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4 comments

What a fascinating man. I think I would find the book difficult to read, especially if coming from a child’s perspective at times. I agree that it is an important topic and could inform us of better ways to navigate fundamentalist Islam that also supports terrorist activities.

Kay Bird’s account on Egypt is based mostly on accounts he read elsewhere and transplanted in his so-called ‘memoir’ with below minimum recognition of his sources. I was shocked to see how a Pulitzer prize awardee could indulge in such blatant borrowing from other people under cover of misleading endnotes that don’t evidence the extent of his plagiarism. Moreover, the dates in the Egyptian section of his book don’t tally AT ALL. Pretending that his family had met or known certain neighbors when the neighbors were no longer in Maadi, having either died or moved out BEFORE his family’s arrival!!!! The discrepancy list is long and his attributing certain stories to his ‘keen’ observation, even longer. Mr. Bird is a fraud!
I have written him and told him what I think of his work.
Samir W. Raafat
author of Maadi 1904-1962 Society & History in a Cairo Suburb

[…] experience in Unpolished Gem; Kai Bird’s recollections of a childhood in the Middle East in Crossing Mandelbaum’s Gate. Having liked The Year of Magical Thinking, I’m looking forward to reading Joan […]